


we made a sensation

by mywholecry



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alcoholism, M/M, On the Bus Mall, References to Child Abuse, References to Underage Prostitution, Teen Runaways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-08
Updated: 2013-07-08
Packaged: 2017-12-18 01:51:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/874336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mywholecry/pseuds/mywholecry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>WIP amnesty: Once, before Tony left his tower and his titles, Bruce told him that you stayed safer if you traveled in twos. At the time, he wanted Tony to come with him so desperately that he would have said a lot of things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we made a sensation

**Author's Note:**

> I'm taking everything that's been on my computer for more than a year and posting it in as complete a form as I'll ever possibly manage! 
> 
> Trigger warnings in the tags - most are references and not graphic. 
> 
> Title and love of gay teen runaways from "On the Bus Mall" by The Decemberists.

Tony sits cross-legged on the bed and stares at himself in the cloudy mirror on the wall. He practices his smile, a different slant every time to hide the fact that there isn’t any light behind his eyes. Bruce lays on his stomach beside him and says, quietly, “You know you don’t have to do that. You already know how to lie.”

“This face is our moneymaker,” Tony replies, and Bruce turns away to smile into the curve of his arms. 

“Get your beauty sleep, then.”

This is the first real room they’ve had in awhile. It’s been raining for a few days, and they can afford it just this once, the peeling wallpaper and the windows painted shut, no curtains. The first thing Tony did when they got inside was pull the top sheet off the bed and hang it over the one window so the streetlights and headlights made shadows go dancing across the walls.

Tony shifts and pokes him in the side, murmuring, “Get under the blanket, then.” 

They both move so Bruce is lying on his side, Tony turned to press up against the line of his back. The first few times they did this, he would wait until he thought Bruce was asleep to get close. Now, Tony breathes quietly against the knot of his spine, thin arms curled around his waist to keep him in place. Once, before Tony left his tower and his titles, Bruce told him that you stayed safer if you traveled in twos. At the time, he wanted Tony to come with him so desperately that he would have said a lot of things. 

They’ve taken it seriously enough. They haven’t been apart since.

*

Bruce always wakes up before Tony. He untangles himself carefully and kneels down on the floor, stealing Tony’s Marlboros and lighter from the jeans he abandoned there. He sits in the armchair in the corner and lights one.

He’s halfway into his second one when Tony stirs. He sits up and looks around, sighing when he sees Bruce, maybe relieved. 

“C’mere,” he murmurs, and Bruce moves back to the bed, holding out the cigarette without being asked. Tony takes a long draw and smiles through the smoke. He always looks like he’s enjoying them more than Bruce. They lay on their backs and share the rest of it, and then Tony rolls off the bed and onto his knees, pulling the sheet away to fill the room up with early morning light. 

“It’s a new day,” he says, standing in front of the window. The plane of his back is long and pale. He’s lost weight, but he’s still wiry, strong. Bruce can never stop looking at him once he starts, even when Tony turns around and gives him that slow, real smile, and adds: “Full of possibilities.”

“How much money do we have again?” Bruce asks. 

“Enough that I’m not going to let you stand on any street corners in the near future,” Tony says, and Bruce recoils a little, turning his face away. He’s never told Tony what he did when he was traveling alone, after he ran off from his foster home, what he thought he might have to do when they can’t con people out of enough cash to get by, since Tony’s dad caught on to the fact that Tony hadn’t just left, that he was bankrolling Tony’s mission to get him and Bruce as far away from the city as they could manage. 

He might just be joking, but Tony’s too smart. They both are. 

Now, he crawls back onto the bed and insinuates arms around Bruce, his face pressed into his neck. He tightens his hold enough to make Bruce squirm, turning so they’re pressed chest to chest and he can see Tony’s face close-up. 

“What’s your next bright idea?” Bruce asks, quietly. 

“Posing as waiters, getting credit cards,” Tony says, breath warm near Bruce‘s cheek, “Use them to buy food, dump them, move on.” 

“We can’t get your semi-famous face on too many security cameras.” Bruce tugs away to stand up, stretch his arms above his head. “Your father will have to figure out a better story than an overseas boarding school.” 

“Good thing we’ve got your average, nondescript face,” Tony says. “Very meat and potatoes. Positively Midwestern.” 

“I’m from the West Coast,” Bruce says, tossing Tony’s jeans at him. “Put your pants on.” 

Tony crows, “One more piece of the Banner puzzle.” He arches his back to put his jeans on, boxers slipping below his hips, and Bruce doesn’t watch him this time. He’s got to be careful about that. 

*

They make it to Chicago in early August, stepping off the bus to find out that the heat’s almost letting up and that Tony was recognized back in Pennsylvania. Bruce stops off at public libraries occasionally to google him, and this time there’s a blurry cellphone picture of Tony at a nightclub going around. _Son of legendary innovator spotted far from boarding school._

They were there to get wallets, but Tony had pulled him into the pit with a low murmur of, “Let’s look the part,” and a hand on the small of his back. They didn’t get pictures of Bruce trying to dance, clinging too much to Tony’s shoulders, but they got a clear shot of both of their faces at the bar when Bruce got water and Tony flirted his way to a beer. 

He doesn’t tell Tony until they’re settled in a park for the night. It’s still warm out, and the skies are clear, and Tony’s restless from so many hours sitting still on the bus. He climbs trees and talks to strangers and wanders away from Bruce for so long that he starts to feel anxiety pull inside of him, a distant tug that dulls when he hears Tony’s voice drifting back in a fake British accent. 

He throws himself onto the grass next to Bruce, buries himself against his side. 

“Oi, mate,” he says, quietly, pressing a smile into Bruce’s shoulder, “you look a trifle miffed.” 

Bruce leans away from him, pushing gently at his shoulder. 

“Can you be Tony for a minute?”

Tony’s face shifts instantly, eyebrows knitted. He moves to kneel in front of Bruce and press a hand to his knee, looking serious. 

“What’s up?” he asks. 

Bruce pulls the page he printed out from his back pocket, unfolding it slowly before he hands it over with a soft, “Sorry.” He watches Tony read it, the flash of shock on his face before it evens out just like he’s practiced. He drops the paper on the grass when he’s finished, flashes a smile. 

“That’s what you’re worried about?” he asks. “A shitty gossip blog?”

“A shitty gossip blog that got a clear shot of your face,” Bruce says, slowly. “People are going to start noticing you if this gets enough hits and they all find out you’re not at boarding school.”

Tony’s face doesn’t change at all as he serenely says, “Well, let’s make sure they don’t recognize me.” 

In the morning, they go to a drugstore and buy a pair of scissors, a pack of razors, shaving cream, a bag of Doritos to split between them. Tony says they can spare it; he picked up some guy’s wallet in the park last night after he tried to convince Tony to go down on him despite the wedding ring on his finger. 

They hole up in the bathroom, and Bruce shaves Tony’s head carefully, keeping one hand splayed on his shoulder to keep him still. It takes too long, and Tony won’t stop moving, craning his neck to try to see the back of his head in the mirror. 

“This feels like a really good plan,” Tony says. “I think this is only going to increase my good looks.” 

“You look all of six years old right now,” Bruce replies, “but all the better to charm people.” 

He finishes up and helps Tony rinse himself off in the sink before stepping back to let him look at himself. He dries his head off with a fistful of paper towels then grins at Bruce in the mirror. 

“See?” he says. “I barely recognize myself.”

Bruce steps up behind him, lets himself carefully run fingers over the base of Tony’s skull. 

“Can we keep moving?” he asks, quietly. 

Tony leans back into him for a long moment, watching Bruce steadily in the mirror.

“Of course,” he says. “You know, I’ve been thinking about heading west.” 

“I might just come with you,” Bruce replies, agreeably, and Tony turns to press a dry kiss to his cheek. 

“Onward,” he intones, sweeping the trash off of the sink and grabbing Bruce’s wrist to pull him out of the bathroom and back outside. It’s already hot outside, and Bruce puts together enough change to buy a Coke from a street vendor to share between them. 

They have a separate fund for bus money, tucked into Bruce’s shoe, but they manage to sneak onto the first one they can find going out of town so they don’t have to use it. If they can keep this act going, they might be able to save up enough to stay in motels as fall turns into winter, as they head towards California.

They haven’t talked about it, but Bruce can already feel California under his skin again, singing sun warm and bright. 

*

They spend two days resting in a small town outside of Kansas, holed up in a cheap motel and splitting shitty pizzas and bags of microwave popcorn between them. For a while, it feels like they’re normal, with the TV turned up as loud as it can and Tony jumping on the bed. 

On the first night, Bruce takes an hour long shower, cleaning dust off of his skin from hitch-hiking outside of Missouri because the bus was taking too long and they were both restless to get across state lines again. He thinks almost aimlessly about inviting Tony to join him and blushes, touches himself slowly until he comes while he’s trying not to think about Tony’s skin under his fingers. 

When he gets out, sweatpants slung low on his hips, Tony is sitting on the single bed with a six pack of beer and a wicked smile.

He says, “It’s not as easy to use fake IDs here, I had to flirt my way into these,” and Bruce swallows hard and tries to ignore the way his head swims at the smell of the open beer in Tony’s hand when he sits next to him. Tony moves so they’re pressed arm to arm. The bottle is half empty. 

Bruce says, before he can stop himself, “Getting arrested would be a great way to cut this trip short, if that’s what you’re trying to do.” 

Tony pulls back abruptly. 

“Are you pissed?” he asks. He sounds confused, maybe a little scared. Hurt.

Bruce doesn’t look at him. He’s not angry, but he feels like he is, that desperate out of control pull at the back of his head. 

“That was dangerous,” he says, eventually. 

“So is hitch hiking and stealing wallets,” Tony says, slowly. “I was just trying to let us be real teenagers.” 

Bruce has only drank once in his life. It was a long time after his dad went to jail, after his mom died and Bruce went to foster home after foster home until he ran off to head towards New York. It was in his last placement; the two other kids in the house brought in bottles of cheap vodka and Bruce was so on edge at that point that he didn’t see any reason not to fuck up his life just like his dad did. 

He was sick the entire night, and the alcohol got pinned on him when it got discovered in the trash. He was supposed to be leaving for a day in Juvie before he slipped out of the bathroom window and used his last handful of crumpled bills to pay for a bus ticket into Arizona. 

“Sorry,” he says, shaking his head and pushing off of the bed with his hands, making it to the door in three strides. “I’m sorry-you have fun.” 

He stands on the balcony for a few minutes, breathing in cool night air and swallowing down the panic that was creeping through him, in and out. The door squeaks when it opens behind him, and the bottles clink together when Tony steps out next to him with the six pack in one hand.

He sits them quietly on the ground and moves to lean against the railing next to Bruce.

He asks, “Is this part of your dark and shadowy past?” 

Bruce meets his eyes and smiles slightly, nods. Tony fumbles for his hand and holds on to it, lacing their fingers together. They stand silently until Tony says, eventually, “Want to see how many bottles we can throw off the balcony before they kick us out?” 

“Nah,” Bruce says, tugging him back towards the room. “Let’s go to sleep.”

They fall asleep watching reruns of _Cheers_ , curled close together. 

*

Tony almost gets arrested in Kansas. A shop clerk caught him lifting a wallet from a customer and tried to hold him while he called the police, but Bruce knocked down a display in desperation and got Tony out the back door when everyone’s attention shifted. They run until their lungs burn, sneakers pounding on the pavement. They stop at a gas station and lock themselves into the single bathroom, sliding to sit against the same wall. 

“Fuck,” Tony says. “ _Fuck_.”

Bruce is shaking, but he crawls closer to wrap an arm around Tony, press his face into his shoulder. 

“They could have sent you back to your dad,” Bruce says, faintly. 

“We could have been separated,” Tony says. “You would have been alone. In _the Midwest_.”

Bruce laughs, but it sounds wrong, like he doesn’t mean it. Tony takes a long pull from the water bottle in his backpack and sits it on the dirty floor, twisting at the waist to look him in the eyes. There’s a long moment where they just stare at each other, car engines turning off and on close by, and Bruce is suddenly hyperaware of every place that they’re touching.

“I won’t let that happen,” Tony promises, hushed and honest, and Bruce believes him. He believes him so much that he doesn’t really think anything of moving so he’s kneeling in front of him, of sliding unconfident hands across Tony’s shoulder and bending to press their mouths together. It’s a slow, confusing mess of a kiss until Tony reacts belatedly, pushing up against him and licking recklessly into Bruce’s mouth.

Bruce breathes out a quiet, “ _Oh_ ,” somewhere near Tony’s teeth. 

They’re too shaken to get ahold of any money that day. They hitchhike out at dusk, catching a ride with a trucker all the way out of the state. Tony keeps a hand on Bruce the whole way. Every time they glance at each other, it startles a grin out of Tony, manic and honest. When they stop to fill up, Tony presses Bruce up against the passenger side door and kisses him breathless. The trucker, Jack, glances between them when he gets back in, asks, “Where are you boys actually headed?” 

Tony looks to Bruce, and Bruce says, “California,” because he thinks it’s okay to go home now. 

“Well, I’ll get you as far as I can,” Jack says. The engine kicks up, and Tony leans his weight into Bruce’s side. He’s always been in it for the duration, up for anything. Whatever Bruce was looking for. 

The radio plays a Springsteen song, and the sun sets on the horizon that they’re headed for.


End file.
